EA’s Star Wars Battlefront has received largely positive reviews, but if there is one thing that we’re sure many gamers wished that the game had, would be a campaign mode to help tell a richer story and offer more background information to players. So what’s the deal? Why did EA decide to launch the game without a campaign?Turns out that the reason was to ensure the game’s release in time with Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie. Speaking to investors, EA Studios boss Patrick Soderlund was quoted as saying, “We made [the choice] due to time and being able to launch the game side-by-side with the movie that came out to get the strongest possible impact.”
We suppose to be fair it made sense for EA to want to catch the hype with the movie, but given that it wasn’t too long that EA landed themselves in hot water over the alleged rushed release of Battlefield 4 (to compete against Activision’s Call of Duty), you would have thought that EA might have learnt their lesson about pushing out games too early. Thankfully Battlefront was never plagued with the same bugs that Battlefield 4 had, so we guess that was lucky.
As to whether or not the sequel will have a campaign, it sounds like Soderlund has teased the possibility that it might. “I would say the game has done very well for us and reached a very different demographic than a traditional EA game. So from that perspective, it’s a success. Are we happy with the 75 rating? No. Is that something we’re going to cure going forward? Absolutely.”